FLATIRON — Christine Priore never met her father, but she knows he was a hero.
Piore spoke on Monday in front of dozens of firefighters and the family members of the 12 men who died in a 23rd Street fire on Oct. 17 1966, long known as one of the deadliest days in FDNY history.
FDNY Lieutenant Joseph Piore, Christine's father, died in the fire two months before she was born.
“Never having known my father but having been taken in as a member of the FDNY family, I have learned what kind of man he was, and I feel so honored and privileged to be the daughter of a fallen firefighter,” she said. “The FDNY is a legacy carried through generations, and it keeps getting better.”
Lieutenant Joseph Priore (above) died at the age of 42. (Photo credit: FDNY)
Speaking at a commemoration marking the 50th anniversary of the fire, Christine praised the FDNY for keeping alive the memory of the men who died in the fire at 23rd Street and Broadway. The lessons learned from it are still used to train rookie firefighters today, officials said.
The deadly fire broke out just after 9 p.m. on Oct. 17, 1966 at East 23rd Street and Broadway in the adjoining basement of 6 E. 23rd St. and 7 E. 22nd St., where an art dealer had stored drums of flammable lacquer, according to a book on the history of the fire published by the FDNY Foundation.
About an hour after the first call came in, the building was already thick with smoke and burning fiercely, and firefighters had been unable to locate the origin, or the “seat” of the fire.
The buildings had been illegally converted, so firefighters were surprised by the new layout, according to FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer.
A group of 12 men ranging in rank from a probationary firefighter to a deputy chief were still inside the first-floor drugstore at 6 E. 23nd St. when the floor collapsed, trapping them in the fire. None made it out alive.
Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro, who was an 18-year-old college student at the time, recalled standing in Madison Square Park and watching the blaze as the department’s mission turned from extinguishing the fire to a grim search for their fallen comrades.
“I watched as hundreds of firefighters stood in a mixture of heartache and disbelief that so many members of our family could be taken so quickly,” Nigro said.
In the years since the tragedy, the fire has become a major part of training for new firefighters, and led to each firehouse keeping closer tabs on the buildings in their coverage areas in order to avoid having firefighters run blindly into danger, Dwyer said.
“A lot of stuff you see today, each firefighter having a radio, the way our companies go and inspect buildings every day, that’s because of the 23rd Street Fire,” he said. “It’s something that’s at the front of everybody’s thoughts, even though it was so long ago.”
Christine Piore’s mother moved to Long Island after her husband's death, and although Christine knew the background of her father’s death, her mother never spoke about it, she said. And it wasn’t until she was in her late 20s that she began to really look into it.
Christine Priore speaks at a commemoration of her father and 11 other men who lost their lives in the 1966 23rd Street Fire. (Photo credit: Noah Hurowitz)
Once, on an anniversary of the fire, when Christine was in her early 30s, she visited the plaque commemorating her father near the site of the fire and ran into a group of firefighters gathered to do the same. When they realized who she was, they tossed her onto their rig and drove, lights flashing, to the firehouse where her dad had worked.
“I never knew this fire was a big deal in the department until then,” she said.
Since then she said the FDNY has become like an extension of her family. Every year she joins firefighters to commemorate her dad and the others lost that day, and she has learned something about the cause to which her dad gave his life.
“These brave men we lost were heroes,” she said. “I speak for the families of the fallen brothers in thanking all of the men and women of the FDNY that they’ve never forgotten these 12 men 50 years later.”
